updated 11:25 am EDT, Mon August 27, 2012

Jury found tablet not guilty of infringement

Samsung has asked the US District Court for the Northern District of California to reverse its preliminary injunction on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and award damages to compensate for lost sales during the temporary ban. Although the Korean company lost all of its counterclaims against Apple, jurors did not find that the Galaxy Tab had infringed any of Apple's design patents.

"Here, the jury found that Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 does not infringe the D'889 patent," Samsung wrote in the filing. "Since the purported infringement of the D'889 patent was the only basis for the preliminary injunction, the jury's finding means that Samsung had a right to sell the Galaxy Tab 10.1 during the period in which the injunction has been in effect."

Despite the jury verdict clearing the Tab 10.1 of infringing design patents based on external aesthetics, the device was found to violate several software patents. Samsung presumably could develop a software update to remove or rework the infringing features.

The jury verdict may not represent the final outcome in the case. Both sides can now ask the judge to overrule the jury's findings. Judge Lucy Koh already asked jurors to reconsider several minor elements, after damages were nonsensically awarded to Apple for several Samsung devices that were not determined to be infringing.

With a breathtaking immediacy, we see the post-verdict maneuvers begin in the Apple v. Samsung case. Samsung has now filed with the District Court a motion [PDF] to immediately lift the preliminary injunction on the one device the jury didn't find infringing which had been blocked by a June 26 order [PDF] enjoining Samsung from "making, using, offering to sell, selling in the United States, or importing into the United States the Galaxy Tab 10.1."

The jury didn't know that, of course, or didn't connect the dots on this either. For whatever reason seemed good to them, they didn't find the Galaxy Tab 10.1 infringing Apple's 'D889 patent. And that was the only one that the District Court judge and the Federal Circuit thought [PDF] should be blocked by an injunction pending the outcome of the trial. Neither the judge nor the Federal Circuit seemed to think the other Apple patents were likely to prevail, but with this jury, the Alice in Wonderland of juries as I think of them, it was the opposite.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120827143911783

My hunch is that this hurry-to-be-done jury, eager to show 'balance' by tossing a bone to Samsung, arbitrarily picked the very Samsung product that two courts had ruled looks the most like an Apple product.

Here's a more detailed critique of that jury.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390

Apple may end up losing more because the Galaxy Tab can enter the U.S. market than it gains by keeping out some easily tweaked phones.

And you and I will get a chance to discover if our court system can fix the results of a really dumb jury decision.